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Mathematica Italiana: A Digital Platform for the History of Mathematics in Italy
Tue, July 14, 9:15 to 10:45am, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Pentland AuditoriumEnglish Abstract
Mathematica Italiana is a digital library that makes internationally accessible a rich and representative corpus of works in the mathematical sciences in Italy from the advent of print to the first half of the twentieth century. Promoted by a group of mathematicians and historians coordinated by Mariano Giaquinta, Director of the “Ennio De Giorgi” Research Center in Mathematics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, the project offers a national edition conceived as a collective effort to share and disseminate the works that shaped Italian mathematical culture. The digitized materials come from Italian public libraries—among them the Library of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and the Biblioteca Carlo Viganò in Brescia—as well as from private collections. All items have been scanned and can be downloaded directly from the website; many are still unavailable elsewhere despite the growing abundance of digital resources.
The corpus is organized into several sections:
• Monographs, including original editions by Agnesi, Betti, Beltrami, Bianchi, Bombelli, Cavalieri, Cremona, Fagnano, Lagrange, Mascheroni, Peano, Ruffini, Saccheri, Severi, Vitali, Volterra, and others.
• Opera Omnia, with digital editions of Beltrami, Cremona, Danesi, Fagnano, Levi-Civita, and Riccati.
• Elementary Treatises, widely used in higher education.
• Habilitation Theses, produced at the Scuola Normale Superiore up to 1927.
The edition also includes an Onomasticon, a structured index of Italian mathematicians linked to online biographical resources, and connections to major international digital libraries.
Presented in 2011 at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Mathematica Italiana (http://matematicaitaliana.sns.it/) stands today as a significant example of how digital technologies can support historical research, expand access to primary sources, and foster new avenues of investigation at the intersection of the history of science and digital humanities.